January 22, 2016

Author and Educator to Discuss “Education in a Hotter Time: Climate Change and the University”

The next event in the Ashland University College of Arts and Sciences’ biennial Symposium Against Indifference will feature a lecture by author and educator David Orr titled “Education
in a Hotter Time: Climate Change and the University.” In connection with this year's theme "Environmental Sustainability," the event which is co-sponsored by the Ashland University Honors Program will be held Monday, Feb. 8, at 7:30
p.m. in the Trustees’ Room of Myers Convocation Center and is free and open to the public.

Orr argues that institutions of higher education are in a great
position to lead, to educate differently, to buy differently and to build their
buildings differently. In Orr’s words, “the worth of education must now be
measured against the standards of decency and human survival.”

Orr, who is a frequent lecturer at colleges and universities throughout
the United States, Europe and Asia, is counselor to the president at Oberlin College. He is the author of seven books, including “Down to the Wire: Confronting
Climate Collapse” (Oxford, 2009). His eighth
book, “Dangerous Years: Climate Change
and the Long Emergency,” will be published by Yale University Press in
2016.

He has served on the boards of many organizations including the Rocky
Mountain Institute and the Aldo Leopold Foundation. He has been awarded eighthonorary degrees and a dozen other awards
including a Lyndhurst Prize, a National Achievement Award from the National
Wildlife Federation and leadership awards from the U.S. Green
Building Council (2014) and from Second Nature (2012).

While at Oberlin, he spearheaded the effort to design, fund and build
the Adam Joseph Lewis Center, which was named by an AIA panel in 2010 as “the
most important green building of the past 30 years,” and as “one of 30
milestone buildings of the twentieth century” by the U.S. Department of Energy.

About Symposium Against Indifference

The College of Arts and Sciences at Ashland University inaugurated the Symposium Against Indifference in 2001 as a biennial series of events and lectures dedicated to overcoming apathy in the face of human concerns by raising awareness and promoting compassionate engagement. The Symposium seeks to challenge the University committee -- as well as the wider Ashland community -- toward a deeper understanding of difficult affairs and toward creative personal and corporate responses. Symposium themes from previous years include the Holocaust, human nature, terrorism, the promises and perils of technology, inquiry into what make a hero, globalization and Latin America.